Macworld has a retrospective of Mac history.

[Fallo]

Pick a mistake. It would have wiped out any other company that didn't have the equivalent of MacHeads, those do or die "it's ok, Steve, we forgive you (again)" crowd.

Design flaws aside, the Apple /// probably wouldn't have succeeded anyway, because Apple's counterculture image made them unappealing to the business market. That and the /// was a 6502 machine, and thus couldn't run CP/M. Commodore's business computers also flopped (in the US, anyway) because they were 6502-based.

As for the Mac, it only began to turn a profit in 1987. During 1984-1986, it was the good old Apple II that brought in the money.

Then of course, Apple nearly expired in 1996 when the Mac line had become stale and Windows 95 was being promoted aggressively, and it took the return of Steve Jobs to save them.

 

[Ragooman]

Mac switched to Intel

Mac switched to Intel

Actually, I'm fairly certain Mac switched to Intel because the PowerPC processor was too inefficient. It needed a good sized fan to keep it cool and they'd pretty much maxxed out the power they can get from it while keeping it small and without a huge fan. So, naturally, the switched to Intel, which has a smaller processor that doesn't need a complex cooling system to keep things going. Also, they are available at higher speeds, and dual core.
--Jack

In fact it is quite the opposite. PowerPC is far more efficient than the Intel, in speed and power. Motorola shot themselves in the foot because of a severe problem with their deliverables -- and they never should have split with the IBM design team--the original designers. We used a large amount of PowerPC's too at Lucent/ATT in all of our Telecom systems - on the order of hundred processors just in one system-- imagine how much power and cooling you would need otherwise. But throughout the 90's, Motorola continually kept falling short on delivering their next chip release. This always affected our design schedule and I'm sure it affected Apple design team as well-- in order to remain competitive.

=Dan
Happy Birthday Mac